Churchill spoke of not wanting a repeat of a First World War battlefield and, after all, the British homeland was closest to this battlefield, so they were quite prudently cautious. They wanted to go in 19, and the British acted with much more caution.
So planners had decided that Normandy was the location most likely to succeed, for various reasons: the beaches could accommodate a buildup of forces the German approaches to the beaches could be more easily contained then elsewhere and it was less well-defended than other areas along the coast.Īnother thing that people consider when they think of British reluctance to attack the coast was that throughout the period of planning, once the Americans come into the war, the Americans are quite impatient about attacking the continent. Nevertheless, the Atlantic wall was still a formidable obstacle and by 1944 it was even stronger and not a very welcoming target. The Germans attacked the Soviets in June of ’41 and then the Japanese attacked the Americans in December of ’41, bringing both the Soviets and the Americans into the war on the side of Great Britain, which of course increased the possibility of Allied victory in the war. The Axis itself really created the conditions that in many ways were conducive to the D-Day assault. You can imagine why they wouldn’t have been very keen then. The Soviet Union and the Americans were not in the fight, so the prospect of returning at that time was pretty grim. Churchill at that time had promised that the Allies would return and liberate the continent but at that time only British and Commonwealth forces stood alone against Nazi Germany. You can take planning for the invasion all the way back to May 1940 after the surrender of France and the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk. John Maker: It wasn’t really that their minds were changed but the conditions changed such that by 1944 the prospect of attacking the coast was much more feasible than it had been earlier in the war. Canada's History Youth Committee Members.
0 kommentar(er)
